


Love, Where Is Your Fire?

by Kemmasandi



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Pre-Canon, Sticky Sex, Tactile Interfacing, a small lover's spat, make-up sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orion revisits the Pits after a long time away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love, Where Is Your Fire?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zuzeca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/gifts).



> **Rating:** M  
>  **Universe:** TF:Prime [prewar]  
>  **Word Count:** 5024  
>  **Characters/Pairings:** Megatronus/Orion Pax  
>  **Content Advisory:** Violence, though not really serious; a wee bitty bit of sticky sex. Also a lot of headcanony stuff; Orion gets to be Mr Exposition for me today.
> 
> Another holiday fic trade, this one for zuzeca! :D
> 
> I used to luuuuuuurve writing fight scenes. Kinda fell out of the habit since I joined the TF fandom [it got replaced by porn. *stupid laughs*] but I always wanted to do more, given that there’s soooooo much possibility for cool stuff with, y’know, _giant alien robots._
> 
> Also, a note on Orion: he looks small in comparison to Megs, but he really isn’t. According to [my frametype headcanons](http://protihexirecords.tumblr.com/post/67741875517/headcanons-ahoy-frame-types-and-system-configurations) he is one of the largest groundbound models, and for this reason I don’t feel like he’d stand out all that much down in the gladiatorial rings… /headcanons

LOVE, WHERE IS YOUR FIRE?

Orion Pax’s day began with an explosion and a set of extended curses, muffled through the thin, uninsulated walls of the cut-price hostel at which he was staying.

He rolled off the berth and found that the lights weren’t working. Unfazed, he did his morning stretches in darkness, to the tune of the hostel proprieter haggling with an electrician in the courtyard beneath his open window. Orion had never exactly been a mech given to panic, but several visits to Kaon had rendered him resistant to all forms of minor disaster.

He left the room as the first light of dawn crept into the northeastern horizon, keying in the lock combination to the security pad out of habit. He gave the harried-looking night shift receptionist a polite hello as he went through the foyer. She nodded and gave him a frayed smile in return. The proprieter was still outside shouting at his comunit; no doubt the cause of her angst. 

The hostel occupied the lowest floors of an entire office block, its courtyard surrounded by a high crenelated wall. Orion passed under an arch tens of mechanometres thick and emerged into the melting pot of Kaon.

It was early by Orion’s chronometer, two joor into the dawn shift. Kaon’s streets were as busy as ever. Mecha hurried to and fro, descending into the subway systems and into the doors of administration towers that reached up into the slowly-bluing sky high above. This was the lowest of the above-ground districts; these mecha were all of the fifth and sixth castes, office workers, suppliers, entertainers and unskilled artisans.

Orion was of the third caste, and acutely aware that under normal circumstances he wouldn’t be interacting with mecha like them at all.

He walked downhill several blocks and joined the crowd squeezing into an underground subway station. People seldom used their altmodes for transport in Lower Kaon. The streets were overpopulated as things stood; adding the confusion of altmode allowances stood to cause more trouble than it solved. Public transport was patchy at best, but it was better than nothing.

Rather than boarding a train, Orion descended several levels and slipped into the privately-owned sector of the station. There were no trackside shops here, no security cameras. Graffiti  covered the walls. Orion came across a group of sparklings playing in the shadows, their plating warped with malnutrition. They turned and fled before him. His spark ached with sympathy, but he knew there was little he could do for them.

The old service elevator was just as he’d left it. He stepped into the shaft, feeling the mechanisms bob under his pedes. It creaked into action, carrying him down, down. Orion’s altimeter pinged at him – he was now more than one hundred mechanometers below the ground-level standard.

The door opened. A blast of hot Pits air washed in over him.

The Kaoni Undercity – colloquially, the Pits – was worlds removed from the city above. There, mecha might struggle to make ends meet. Here, they dodged death at every step.

The Pits were what happened when megavorn of separation between the working classes and those who governed met the danger of unrestricted heavy industry and the constant cost-cutting opportunism of big business, and was allowed to fester unrestrained. The entire place ran on slave labour. It had to – no free mech would willingly choose to live and work in such conditions. Underground, shielded from the optics and sensibilities of those who reaped the benefits, working until they quite literally dropped, then being replaced by the next desperate mech in line for what little income the employers saw fit to compensate them with.

Orion stepped out of the elevator. Dull yellow waylamps lit up a boiling, glistening tide of mecha: workers, grifters, commuters, beggars. Rickety shopfronts and tenement blocks splitting at the seams with tenants leaned in over his helm, shadows arching up into the distant cave roof. He tasted oils in his mouth, dust on his glossa as the passage of mecha stirred the heavy atmosphere.

There was a red glow in the air, drifting amongst the smog that choked the atmosphere between the stands of underworld trunk towers that held up the city above. The Pits derived their name from the massive smelting pits that dotted the cityscape, belching out heat and pollutants in such vast quantity that even in the depths of wintertime, Kaon’s surface remained free of ice and snow. Down here the heat was almost unbearable. Orion cranked his vents wide open. He’d have to get them replaced as soon as he went back to Iacon. Again.

He moved forward, and the river of mecha swallowed him up. He was taller than most of them regardless of frametype; malnutrition took its toll on even the largest of mecha. The current carried him five blocks north. He managed to maneuver himself into a gloomy side street. The buildings that lined either side had been jettied out over the road so far that the inhabitants could probably have reached out of their grimy, carbon-blackened windows and touched the opposing walls. Electrical lines and exhaust pipes wound like veins through the space that was left.

At the end of the street, there was a red-lit entryway set far back in a shadowed portal.  He headed for it, his steps quickening. Hopefully he wasn’t too late.

As he approached, a hint of movement in the shadows beside the arched doorway caught his optic. He narrowed his focus, switching his optical filters to infrared. The heat of the atmosphere blinded him. He could barely make out the long-limbed shape of a mech lurking just inside the portal.

Orion switched back to RGB spectrum filters, nibbling thoughtfully at his lower lip. That wasn’t Megatronus. It _could_ be Soundwave – but it could also be any one of a number of untrustworthy mecha. The gladiatorial arena attracted those types like scraplets to a carcass.

He reined in his pace, warily keeping an optic on the portal. The street was a dead end. There were altogether too many of those in the Pits.

More movement, and this time a small dark figure detached itself from the shadows. Orion mistook it for a sparkling at first, until he got a good look at the broad, adult proportions and the glowing red-filter optics.

This would be Rumble, then. He’d met the other of the arena’s resident Minicons, Rumble’s twin brother. The resemblance was uncanny. Where Frenzy’s grime-streaked finish was grey-blue underneath, Rumble’s was solid black. Otherwise, they seemed almost clones of each other.

“Yer,” Rumble said, raising a servo and throwing a sloppy salute. “We been waitin’ for ages. What took yer so long?”

Soundwave stepped out of the archway behind his symbiote. He was slim, and not quite Orion’s height. Orion, well aware of Soundwave’s reputation as the only mech ever to have come close to unseating Megatronus from his throne, did not let this color his opinion of the mech.

“Good morning,” Orion said with a respectful nod, hoping it was the right course of action. “Is Megatronus here this orn?”

Soundwave gave him an appraising look. Orion assumed he did, at least – the visor hid most of the gladiator’s expression. He waited until Orion had begun to squirm inwardly before giving a short nod in return.

“Megatronus: currently engaged in sparring. Query: Orion Pax, willing to watch?”

Orion found himself nodding without really thinking about it.

Soundwave turned to the archway. Rumble leapt up onto him, scaling his frame and latching onto the gladiator’s shoulder.

The recessed door slid open with a squeak of runners. Beyond it, the arch continued, lined with blue fae-lights. Stairwells branched off from the main corridor, leading into the upper floors of the building. Soundwave turned a corner and Orion hurried to catch up before he was left behind. Rumble smirked at him from his keynote’s shoulder.

They emerged into a small courtyard overlooked by the rear facades of five surrounding buildings. Everything was tinted red, overwhelming the bright blue glow that spilled out through the open door. The building through which they had just come through stepped upwards to a peak eight levels above the ground, and the two on either side had built out over it, looking as if they were leaning on its roof. They came together in an arch ten storeys up, the buildings behind them arrayed with barely a gap between them. Orion’s pressure sensors glitched, and for a frightening moment he felt the weight of all that metal bearing down on him.

He shook his helm and reset his environmental sensors. The heat disappeared momentarily and the pressure eased, returning to an accurate level.

The gladiatorial ‘arena’ was nothing of the sort. Like all blood sport, it was technically illegal. The gladiators risked imprisonment and torture if they were caught; the spectators fines which would beggar them. Yet in practice, local law enforcement generally turned a blind eye towards them. Orion hadn’t understood why at first. It had seemed counterintuitive, to allow something which was so powerful a symbol of discontent to continue. The first time he had attended a fight at Megatronus’ behest, however, he had seen something humbling at work.

The Pits _needed_ the fights. They used it as a sort of pressure valve, to burn off all the stress and bitter energy generated by the lives which their inhabitants led. The population of Kaon’s undercity was fourteen times that of the surface, packed into a living space barely a thousand square mechanometers larger. The average wage was almost a millionth that claimed by the upper city’s top officials. Starvation was rampant; hundreds of mecha died every day because of lack of vital resources like energon and healthcare, yet the richer surface dwellers could afford home energon dispensers which refined and concentrated it into a dozen different forms.

The rampant unfairness of it all was almost more than most mecha could take. Helpless to make a difference, they channelled that anger and despair into the gladiatorial matches. The largest crowds took on an almost transcendental nature, several thousand mecha moving and thinking and baying for death and destruction as one. The atmosphere was frightening, overpowering. Orion, a sworn pacifist, had found himself crying out along with the crowd, giving voice to emotions and desires that weren’t his. It had been exhausting and traumatic.

( _He’d wobbled on his way out of the crowd. He remembered Megatronus catching him, streaked with his opponent’s energon, optics burning red and EM field lashing with bloodlust not quite spent. He had no memory of what had come next until he’d woken up in his friend’s berth, optics gummed with the remnants of tears and his mouth and valve stinging and swollen._

 _For what it was worth, that had been a vast improvement on the previous night._ )

The little courtyard rang with the clashing of blades and armour. Mecha massed around the edges of the open space, but the mood was quiescent. This was not an official match, but a time to practice.

Soundwave led him to the front of the crowd. He did not have to clear a path; mecha made way for him automatically.

In the middle of the courtyard, Megatronus faced off against a massive young bruiser. The match was plainly going all Megatronus’ way. His opponent, one of the larger dexter frames, was battered and crisscrossed with shallow slices that drew just enough energon to mark him. Drips carpeted the sand-strewn floor. Megatronus by contrast was untouched, his silver armour gleaming under the soft orange lights that hung from the facades of the surrounding walls.

As Orion watched, the bruiser made a last desperate rush, sword arm tucked in close to his waist. He reached out with his shield arm, drawing Megatronus’ defence. Megatronus effortlessly deflected the blow. The bruiser kept going. Orion thought for a moment that he might overpower Megatronus by sheer force of momentum. He struck out with his sword – Megatronus had left his flank unguarded. 

There was a sharp bark of laughter. Megatronus drove in to meet the mech’s onslaught. Orion saved the next three seconds’ worth of visual data in order to go through at a slower speed later on. Megatronus went to one knee and the crowd roared as he blocked the oncoming strike, lifting the mech over his helm and tossing him to the ground. The mech’s momentum carried him forward amid the screech of his armour against the tiles. He stopped sliding just in front of Orion’s pedes.

Orion looked up, and into Megatronus’ optics.

His friend was grinning, his field alight with pleasure at his success. He strode over to the prone, groaning bruiser, optics locked with Orion’s all the way. “Yield now, and save yourself some dignity,” he advised. The low growl of his voice was almost identical to the tone which he used in the berth.

“Fine,” the defeated mech groaned in a thick Slaughter City drawl. “Lemme up.”

Megatronus even offered him a helping hand. Evidently they knew each other.

The crowd burst into an uproar. Both victor and vanquished left the stage, two more fighters taking their places. Megatronus dismissed the young bruiser and looped his cannon arm around Orion’s shoulder, steering him towards the shadows under a first-floor balcony at the edge of the courtyard.

“It has been a while since you last contacted me,” he observed. “I had wondered if perhaps you had lost interest, or been otherwise troubled by our association.”

Orion shook his helm in denial. “Nothing so worrisome. I contracted a virus, and I wanted to be absolutely certain that it had been eradicated rather than risk transferring it to anyone here.”

“Kind of you,” Megatronus said. His EM field whipped and skirled around their frames like a particularly tenacious wind. Orion did his best to prevent his own previously sedate field from responding. Iaconian habits died hard, and he didn’t want his enduring reputation to be one of promiscuity. None of the Kaonis would care – he hoped. All the same, he wanted Megatronus to remember him for his mind rather than his frame.

There was a short silence while he wrestled with his unruly spark. He was keenly aware of Megatronus’ servo against his upper arm, the tips of warframe claws tapping against the edge of his windshield. The half-embrace kept him pressed tight against Megatronus’ chassis. Gradually he realised that the vivid thrum of his heavy-duty flight engine hadn’t throttled back at all.

Megatronus broke the silence. “You’re a little cold today.”

“I am functioning at temperatures a little above optimal,” Orion said, frowning. “How can I be anything else down here?”

Megatronus gave him a look drier than the Sea of Rust. He said nothing, instead loosening his grip on Orion’s shoulder and striding ahead. Orion slowed, his spark and field flushing with embarrassment.

There was a door under the balcony, half-invisible under centuries of smoke. Megatronus took hold of the latch and kicked it open with a clatter that went largely unheard beneath the noise of the crowd. He ducked under the threshold, the aperture almost too small for his broad ornamented shoulders, and gestured for Orion to follow him. “Watch out – there are steps.”

Orion picked his way down the short flight. The room looked abandoned. He could hardly see where he was going. Switching to low-light filters made visible a large open basement area with several items of light furniture stacked at one end of the room. There was a set of stairs at the other end, leading up into a closed trapdoor in the roof.

There was a sudden rush of movement behind him. He turned, and Megatronus caught him bodily, lifting him off his pedes and carrying him two steps before they slammed into the wall.

“What—?!” he exclaimed, pushing at Megatronus’ chest. The gladiator brushed his hands away and pressed their frames together from shoulders to pelvic span. Orion’s pedes dangled a mechanometer off the ground. The frustrated energy pouring from Megatronus’ frame drew an answering throb of heat from his spark.

They stood locked together like that for long seconds, until Megatronus spoke. “You come to me late; you act strangely when you do. It makes me nervous, Orion.”

His knee pressed between Orion’s thighs. Orion stared at him. Megatronus’ face was inches from his own, and the power he held in check was palpable. Fine tremors ran through his limbs. He was holding Orion just hard enough to pin him in place without hurting him.

Orion licked his lips, venting hard. “So what do you intend to do about it?” he asked.

Megatronus reared back, staring at him. Orion took the opportunity and tucked his legs up between them, planting his pedes against Megatronus’ chest and kicking out. Megatronus stumbled backwards and let go of him. Orion dropped to the floor and took the impact square on his hips, a sharp pain lancing through his lower back. He scrambled upright despite it and threw himself to the side as Megatronus lunged for him again. The square of light cast through the open door blinded him for a moment and he kept going backwards out of pure instinct.

Megatronus came through the light and grabbed hold of his shoulder. Orion threw a punch which glanced off the side of the gladiator’s helm. Megatronus looked more nonplussed than anything by the attack. He pushed Orion backwards and into the edge of a desk. Orion tipped over backwards with a squawk of surprise.

Megatronus’ full weight was suddenly upon him. He flailed, grasping for a handhold against the dusty, slippery surface. Megatronus’ servos grasped his hips, the tips of his claws digging into Orion’s ventral fairings. The atmosphere around them was hot and full of dust; Orion dragged in huge deep vents to cool himself, focusing on the steady in-out flow of air. He couldn’t concentrate, his processor was whirling and his neural net was alive with purpose. He found a grip on Megatronus’ shoulders and clung tight. His spark gave a confused throb, yearning for something his conscious mind hadn’t yet processed.

There was a long, mournful creak. Orion’s optics opened wide as he felt the surface beneath his back begin to give way. “Megatr—!”

The rest of the word was lost in a thunderous crash that echoed throughout the basement. It seemed to last an age. He hit the ground on his back for the second time in as many minutes, his helm snapping back against the rusted floor and a bloom of fierce pain spreading from the point of impact. Megatronus crashed down on top of him, knocking the air from his vents. The ringing sound of the crash got louder rather than quieter, drowning out the sound of their engines and the cheering of the crowd outside.

Orion blinked, and realised that most of it was coming from inside his helm. He reset his audial and visual centers, and opened his optics again to find Megatronus staring down at him.

He didn’t seem angry. Far from it, in fact. His optics were glowing bright with charge, his field pressing down against Orion’s with insistent pleasure.

“You,” he said, tapping Orion’s chest with a clawed forefinger, “have a great deal of potential.” There was the oddest expression on his face, somewhere between gratified surprise and predatory enjoyment. “You’ve been getting lessons in combat, haven’t you?”

“I thought perhaps I ought to make sure I can defend myself,” Orion said, pushing at his chest. Megatronus raised himself on his elbows, giving him space without getting off of him. “I did not expect to be using it against you,” Orion added, pointedly raising his brows.

Megatronus huffed and looked away. “Yes, well.  I may have overstepped my boundaries.”

Any apology, let alone one so awkwardly sincere, was as rare as diamonds coming from Megatronus.  The accusing frown melted into a moue of surprise.

“You did.” He might forgive Megatronus, but he wasn’t going to absolve him of it either. “Leaping to conclusions is not becoming of a leader.”

Now Megatronus straightened, affronted. “I don’t know where you find the temerity to lecture me.”

“If I don’t, who else will? I count you as a friend, Megatronus, not a leader. To quote a wise mech I work with, ‘Friends don’t let friends make afts of themselves’.”

“Soundwave?” Megatronus said, but he sounded unsure, phrasing it with question markers. “Perhaps. Very well, my young friend. You may continue making sure I do not make an aft of myself.”

Orion vented hard, the tightness easing from his hydraulics. Kaon’s culture was infused to the brim with casual violence. Megatronus likely didn’t see anything wrong with the way he’d dealt with his suspicion.

Neither, apparently, did Orion’s own body. Megatronus’ proximity, the heat and weight of him, were doing interesting things to Orion’s neural lace. Combined with the combat charge racing through his lines, it made his body all but prickle where it touched Megatronus. Warmth was gathering in his chest, trickling down through his abdomen. _Oh, Primus_ , he thought, closing his optics in frustration. Were they fated to frag every time they met? Did the Thirteen derive some sort of twisted amusement from watching him fall into Megatronus’ berth (or wall, or street corner; comfort and privacy were apparently optional) every chance they got?

Warm vents washed over his neck, tickling the bared sensors beneath his chin. He opened his optics just in time to catch Megatronus’ wicked glance before the gladiator dipped his helm to mouth along the cabling of his neck.

“Ah,” he vented, shifting beneath him. There was a splinter of desk beneath his aft, digging between his lower dorsal plating. Splitting his attention between that and the suckling kisses to his neck, he raised his hips in an attempt to worm his servo beneath himself. His knees came up on either side of Megatronus’ legs and the scrape of his inner thighs against the gladiator’s made him gasp.

He wrapped his fingers around the splinter and pulled it out, squinting at it past Megatronus’ helm. Less a splinter than a plank, perhaps. He tossed it away into the corner.

The clatter made Megatronus look up. “Should I care what that was?”

“No,” Orion said, and pulled him down into a kiss.

Megatronus rumbled pleasantly, resting his full weight onto Orion. His servos palmed Orion’s sides, digging his fingers into the gaps between his armor plates. Orion flared them open, sensors singing out as Megatronus delved into his protoform. Charge crackled over his wires, flaring in little snaps between their frames. Orion parted his lips and teased the tip of his glossa over Megatronus’ lower lip, less scarred than the upper. Megatronus opened his mouth and their kiss turned slick and wet. Excitement gathered low in Orion’s abdomen.

He arched his back, pressing the length of his frame against Megatronus’ body. A strong, thick arm slid beneath the curve of his lumbar column, holding him tight against the gladiator’s heavy frame. Megatronus reached down their sides and found Orion’s thigh, pulling it up and around his waist. Orion scraped the side of his pede along the length of Megatronus’ leg before allowing the gladiator to arrange him however he wanted.

Then there were digits digging into the joint of his hips, and a slow, erotic roll of Megatronus’ hips. Orion wrapped his arms around Megatronus’ waist and moaned into their kiss. Megatronus drew back just long enough for the sound to hang in the air around them, low and throaty.

“So,” Megatronus said, rough and rumbling, “what would you have of me, Orion?”

Orion wet his lips, venting harshly. The best thing of all was the way Megatronus looked at him: optics glowing near white and narrowed, his mouth held slightly open and the hint of his dente visible between his lips like he wanted to devour Orion. The way he _wanted_ Orion, so honestly and confidently, and did not hide the extent of his desire not play games with when and how he wanted him.

Orion reset his vocaliser before he spoke, and the click of it was loud in the quietened room. “I want you inside me.”

Megatronus’ optics narrowed further, as though he felt he’d won a victory. He cupped the side of Orion’s helm, sliding his fingers along Orion’s audial and pressing his mouth to the side of his neck. He dragged his dente over the cables beneath Orion’s jaw and suckled at the bare protoform over the main sensory data track. Orion’s vision whited out underneath the tsunami of pleasure data that crashed over him, his tactile centers overloading all at once. He sobbed and clawed at Megatronus’ back, his body going rigid beneath him.

“In me!” he demanded as soon as he could speak again. “ _Please!_ ”

“It’s good to see you’ve recalled your manners,” Megatronus quipped. He pushed himself up for a moment and the metallic sound of his interface panel opening wiped all thought of retort from Orion’s processor. He canted his helm up, the ache in it forgotten, and peered between their frames as Megatronus’ spike extended. The broad blunt head nudged against his belly, making his servos curl tight against Megatronus’ back.  Like everything else about Megatronus, it was big. And Megatronus knew exactly how to use it to best effect.

Orion rested his helm back against the floor, and finally let his aching array slide open. He was hot and wet and it was long past the time when Megatronus would ordinarily be inside him, driving him to overload with long, harsh thrusts that forced him back and forth across whatever surface they’d commandeered… He lifted his hips in a wordless demand.

“Patience, Orion.” Megatronus reached between them, taking his spike in hand. He lowered himself into position, the head of his spike nudging at Orion’s sensor-rich entrance. Orion made an inarticulate noise of animal need and tightened his leg around Megatronus’ hips, attempting to force him inside. Megatronus laughed and took pity on him, pushing inside.

Orion felt himself slide open around Megatronus as though they’d been doing it for vorn. They fit together like they’d been made for each other, his calipers tightening snugly around Megatronus’ girth. His internal channels relaxed as Megatron rocked into him and they settled together, fully connected. Orion let his helm loll back against the floor. Megatronus loomed above him, and began to move.

And _oh,_ it was like coming home. As much as Megatronus wanted him, he wanted Megatronus back. He’d spent his first few visits to Kaon trying to deny that the gladiator’s powerful frame excited him just as much as his mind did. Archivists weren’t supposed to find big strong warbuilds’ frames attractive. They certainly weren’t supposed to _act_ on it, to greet any sort of amorous advance with the sort of eager discovery which Orion had found came naturally where Megatronus was concerned.

The pleasure between his legs cycled higher with each hard thrust and withdrawal. It burned, spreading down the insides of his thighs and up his belly, flooding his neural lace. Megatronus buried his face in the curve of Orion’s neck and kissed and bit, holding him to the edge of pain, then soothing it away.  The brontide rumble of his engine coursed through their frames, the vibrations strongest where they were joined. Charge gathered and leapt between them, snapping in vibrant arcs and discharging into the floor beneath them. It was like riding a storm.

Overload took Orion by surprise. He arched up beneath Megatronus, keening. His vision went white, then black, as his major surface processors reset one by one. His spark throbbed with pleasure and he felt the wave of it wash through his frame from fingers to pedes, sweeping up the insides of his thighs and collapsing him around Megatronus’ spike before exploding outwards in gouts of plasma and starfire.

He felt the gladiator crest as if from a distance, the hammerstrike of Megatronus overload coming down on him like a roll of thunder. Megatronus snarled into his neck, pushing himself deep inside of Orion and holding himself there as he overloaded. Orion deliberately clenched his valve tight around the gladiator’s spike, some perverse subprocessor hoping it might prevent Megatronus’ transfluid from escaping him.

He held Megatronus in his arms until the stiffness of overload left the gladiator. Megatronus vented hard, and the puff of warm air over his sides reminded Orion that his fans were starving for air. He let go reluctantly, dragging in deep vents until the warning lights disappeared from his HUD.

Megatronus unwound Orion’s legs from his waist and pulled out of him. “I didn’t expect to have you so soon after your return, but I have decided I will not complain.” His voice was layered with cockiness, teasing.

“That’s very generous of you,” Orion said. He didn’t quite have the energy for sarcasm, but somehow he managed it. He took Megatronus’ offered hand and sat up.

The gladiator’s spike was still pressurised, though much diminished. He grasped it and slid his fingers in a loose stroke to the head. Megatronus’ groan was his reward.

“Keep that up and I may require you to go a second round,” Megatronus said. This did not sound like a bad deal to Orion at all. The morning was still young, and it didn’t seem as though anyone had taken offense at their absence yet.

He decided to exercise his restraint, however. He let go, and Megatronus tucked his equipment away after an appreciative look at Orion’s still-bared valve. Orion took the hint. He was a mess, but fortunately he’d come prepared! (And what that said about the tattered state of his virtue as an archivist, he probably didn’t want to know.)

Megatronus flared his field and smoothed it down over Orion’s in something as close to affection as he’d ever shown. He didn’t speak, but the banked glow of his optics and the inviting layers of his field wrote a novel for him.

Orion smiled up at him. “It is good to see you again, brother.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cybertronian architecture must be a nightmare to work with. XD


End file.
